The chance of Sinn Féin and the DUP signing off on a comprehensive deal to restore devolution remained on a knife-edge last night as the DUP leader, Rev Ian Paisley, prepared for a critical meeting with Mr Tony Blair in London today.
The British Prime Minister is hoping that Dr Paisley will tell him today that he can at least live with the British and Irish governments' blueprint for restoring devolution, although the outcome of this meeting is unpredictable. Both the DUP and republicans appeared deadlocked on the issue of the DUP demand for photographic verification of future acts of IRA decommissioning.
The British and Irish governments' proposals require republicans to allow publication of visual evidence of decommissioning after devolution is restored and the DUP has demonstrated it is sharing power, it is understood.
The Sinn Féin president, Mr Gerry Adams, signalled yesterday, however, that photographs were unlikely to be forthcoming from the IRA. The DUP in turn has gone beyond the governments' blueprint by demanding that the pictures are published before it will share power with Sinn Féin.
Mr Adams said that Dr Paisley in seeking photographs was "setting out the rationale" for the DUP to humiliate republicans. He added: "Wouldn't it be awful, say we get to the point where we have a comprehensive agreement - and remember Ian Paisley has yet to say yes to working with other parties - but say we got that, and say we get the IRA to come up to the line, and the IRA is prepared to put weapons beyond use, and the IRA is prepared to go into an entirely new mode, and we are all satisfied we are going to see in this time of our lives, perhaps an end to physical force republicanism - is it going to be thrown away because Ian Paisley does not get the process of humiliation that he wants."
Last weekend Dr Paisley said republicans must be humiliated and they must wear "sackcloth and ashes". This weekend he described Mr Adams as a "bloody and deceitful" man.
Mr Adams on RTÉ's This Week programme yesterday repeated that republicans should not "be provoked by the very offensive language that Ian Paisley used . . . This is the language that led to pogroms in the late 1960s".
"If Ian Paisley has problems going into government with Sinn Féin the very fact that Sinn Féin will be putting Ian Paisley into power does not play very well with republicans and nationalists and, broadly speaking, in Catholic communities," he added.
Sinn Féin, nonetheless, recognised the DUP mandate, he said. And despite the recent "offensive" attacks on republicans by Dr Paisley, Mr Adams accepted that at the weekend the DUP leader "did give a begrudging acknowledgement of Sinn Féin's electoral mandate".
"What he has to do is go further than that and say he will be part of the power-sharing institutions, and that he will sign up to equality," Mr Adams added.
Senior DUP party officers including Dr Paisley met over the weekend to consider the British-Irish blueprint, according to a DUP source. A DUP delegation led by Dr Paisley also met the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) on Saturday, following another meeting the previous day.
Dr Paisley, in a statement after the meeting, did not refer to photographic verification but instead complained that the process was being held up because the republican movement had not engaged directly with IICD head, Gen John de Chastelain "to discuss the details of the proposed decommissioning events".